Cooke Foundation Initiative Connects Transfers To Top Colleges(This article appeared in the Oct. 4 issue of Community College Week)

Paul BradleyEditorCommunity College Week

They are the oddest of higher education bedfellows, the rich kid and his poor cousin, the sun and the moon, two ships passing in the night.

Community colleges and selective elite four-year institutions are situated at opposite ends of the country’s highly polarized system of post-secondary education: one catering to the privileged elite, the other to the teeming masses, one measuring itself by how many applicants they exclude, the other by how many they admit.

Just 4 percent of students who attend the nation’s selective four-year college and universities come from families in the bottom economic quartile. Community colleges, by contrast, are crowded with economically disadvantaged students who can only dream of attending an elite college and enjoying all of its inherent advantages…Read more